The Times Beginner’s Guide to Bridge. Andrew Robson

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      Dummy is tabled

      must know

      Bridge is a co-operative game: try to inform your partner about your hand, remembering that quantity is more important than quality when it comes to suggesting a trump suit. Bridge is also a competitive game: your opponents are trying to make your life awkward. Do not be fooled or bullied by them.

      After the play

      Either the declarer fulfils his target (perhaps even making extra tricks), or he doesn’t (because he fails to achieve the contracted number of tricks, by one or more). All eventualities are taken into consideration in the scoring (see pp. 220–7).

      want to know more?

      • The type of bridge described in this book is ‘Rubber Bridge’, a version of Contract Bridge whose overall objective is to win a ‘rubber’, i.e. the best of three games. For more on scoring games and rubbers, see pp. 220–7.

      • Other types of bridge, including Chicago, Duplicate and Minibridge, are outlined on pp. 228–31.

      • Other methods of evaluating a bridge hand (besides counting points) are covered on pp. 190–5.